1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data processing techniques, and more particularly to a nonlinear technique for high-resolution data processing to diminish the effect of system corruption.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior data processing techniques, such as the maximum entropy and maximum likelihood methods, are described by J. P. Burg in his Ph. d. dissertation entitled "Maximum Entropy Spectral Analysis" at the Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. in May 1975, and by J. Capon in the Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 57, pp. 1408-1418, August 1969, entitled "High-resolution Frequency Wave Number Spectrum Analysis", respectively. These approaches use the input time series data and perform mathematical operations on the power levels directly. The results are complex methods having long averaging times and high computational loads.
A general iterative technique is described by R. A. Wagstaff in the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, Vol. 63, pp. 863-869, 1978, entitled "Iterative Technique for Ambient Noise Horizontal Directionality Estimation from Towed Line-Array Data". The described technique produces a deconvolved spatial spectra for one time period and one heading.
What is desired is a simple, fast technique that can produce high-resolution spectra from the output of a conventional processor, such as a beamformer or spectrum analyzer.